As the slaughter in Gaza continues, the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank is carrying out a campaign to crack down on armed resistance groups in Jenin.
The PA dubbed the campaign an attempt 'to restore law and order', but many suspect it is merely a preemptive gesture to President Trump signifying the PA's readiness as a security partner to Israel and the US, all against the backdrop of a looming Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
The campaign has killed several Palestinians, including 21-year-old journalist Shatha Sabbagh, and culminated with the suspension of al-Jazeera in the West Bank. Compared to Israel’s oppressive policies, the role of the Palestinian Authority and its dominant faction, Fatah, is once again questioned.
This happens as Fatah celebrates its 60th anniversary, with echoes from the group’s past as the launcher of armed struggle in 1965 against Israel’s occupation. Fatah was built on representation, activism, and comprehensive nationalism: it energised the Palestinian collective trauma over the loss of homeland into a national liberation movement.
However, this 'valorised past' is recalled today to signify the movement’s devolvement into a shadow of its former self.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was established in 1964 to liberate Palestine from what became Israel, and it comprised several Palestinian groups.
Fatah joined the PLO in 1967 and was allocated 33 of its Executive Committee’s 105 seats as the largest faction in the lot. In 1969, Fatah’s leader Yasser Arafat became the PLO’s chairman.
Ever since, Fatah — aka the Palestinian National Liberation Movement — has increasingly dominated the PLO, making the movement almost synonymous with the PLO and vice versa.
It meant that when the PLO was recognised by the Arab League in 1974 as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, Fatah became that de facto representative of that role. This, inter alia, granted Fatah’s leaders, despite opposition from other PLO factions, the power to sign the Oslo agreement in 1993 with Israel.
Oslo was the PLO and Fatah’s climax of achievements, but it set the national enterprise on a slippery slope of unwarranted pragmatism. It accelerated the end of the ‘traditionalist’ Palestinian national liberation movement dominated by Fatah.
Has Fatah become a farce?
Instead of mobilising Palestinians against Israel’s occupation, thousands of the First Intifada’s activists and former Fedayeen (freedom fighters), mostly from Fatah, were put on the newly formed Palestinian Authority’s payroll.
Over the next three decades, the PA-run public sector grew three-fold and continued to be dominated by Fatah loyalists and old guards, especially in top positions and the PA’s policing/security force, which receives roughly one-third of the PA's total annual budget.
The Second Intifada in 2000 was Fatah’s last hurrah and it saw Fatah-affiliated PA security forces clash with the Israeli army, alongside al-Aqsa Martyrs Bridgade, Fatah’s military wing.
During Operation Protective Shield in 2002, Israel destroyed much of Fatah’s remaining armed infrastructure. Many of the national movement’s field activists were either imprisoned, such as Marwan Barghouti, or assassinated. But it was the death, or some believe the assassination, of Yasser Arafat in 2004 that finally broke Fatah's spine.
With Arafat’s passing, Fatah lost not only its iconic leader and what is left of its foundational militancy but also its very raison d’être. Without armed resistance, it no longer possessed the necessary tools, discourse, or even ideology to mobilise the public. And without Arafat’s "unifying influence: and the movement’s liberationist pull, Fatah fragmented further into narrow turf wars and petty quarrels.
Detached from its former self, the movement sought 'minimalist solutions' to withstand, or coexist with Israel’s occupation. It became the PA and the PA became Fatah.
Non-violent resistance and international diplomacy were adopted as the core course. While this helped underpin the legitimacy of the Palestine cause internationally, it failed to deter Israel’s violence, curb the expansion of settlements, or force Tel Aviv to ‘allow’ Palestinians a path toward self-determination.
To sceptical Palestinians, Abbas’ diplomatic achievements are formalistic at best. Gaining an observer seat at the UN or joining the ICC yielded no tangible ameliorations on the ground in the occupied territories.
Another crucial grievance is the PA’s security coordination with Israel, which Mahmoud Abbas ‘scared’, and which has sucked many Fatah leaders — once revolutionaries and freedom fighters — into an Israel-serving scheme.
By suppressing armed resistance, goes their logic, security coordination serves Palestinian interests by alleviating and avoiding Israeli disproportionate response. Yet, cooperation effectively serves Israel’s interest by outsourcing the management of the occupation to the occupied at a low cost.
Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts OnWhat is more, with every step along the way becoming one with the PA, Fatah suffered the same burden of legitimacy as the PA. Mahmoud Abbas was elected President in 2005 and his smooth transition to power was credited to Abbas’ association with Arafat.
In 2009, however, when his presidency was nearing its end, the PLO’s Executive Committee extended it indefinitely without consulting Palestinians. Abbas has since become the PLO’s chairman, PA’s president, and Fatah’s leader.
Having lost the Parliamentarian election in 2006 to Hamas, and then ejected by the movement from power in Gaza in 2007, may have completed the transformation of Fatah’s identity into that of the PA.
As the Israeli jets began pounding Gaza on October 7 2023, Abbas remained silent for weeks, followed by hollow words of condemnation and about the need for a ceasefire.
Some members of Fatah wanted to seize the opportunity to support the resistance in Gaza and bridge the Gaza-West Bank crevice, only to be thwarted by the ruling Fatah old guard. With direct orders from Abbas, front-line Fatah officials refrained from speaking to the media about Gaza.
Fatah and PA leadership were the present-absentee throughout the slaughter, save for random statements here and there, without anything tangible — due to of lack of ability — to help Palestinians in Gaza.
In an attempt to catch up, unpopular Abbas ordered a reshuffle in the PA’s cabinet in March 2024, with the new government to work toward a ceasefire in Gaza. A laughable effort as Fatah and the PA have had almost no role in the ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel. Hamas and Fatah have, albeit, in Cairo to discuss establishing a committee to run post-war Gaza.
From liberation to governance under occupation, to deterioration in its public support, and mired with internal fractures, Fatah has fundamentally disintegrated as a real political agent in Palestinian realpolitik.
This does not mean the movement lost its core base. Many of its loyalists, particularly among the younger generation, have ended up in suspension, faithful to the idea, but unsure what to do next. They oppose the old guard but lack the tools to change the status quo.
Fatah may have run its natural course, as did other revolutionary movements. What is certain, however, is that the movement is symptomatic of the struggling and fragmented Palestinian national enterprise as a whole, which also includes Hamas and its armed resistance alternative.
Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currently a frequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank.
Follow him on Twitter:
Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of °®Âþµº, its editorial board or staff.